28 Gardening 
Fic. 23. Young seedlings of beet and bean plants, showing how extensive is 
the root system even in very young plants. The roots of the plant in the center 
are 8 inches long, almost three times the length of the parts above ground. 
The root system. Suppose we try to get out of the 
ground all the roots belonging to a plant. We may 
loosen the earth with a trowel or a spading fork and with 
our hands break away the soil and sort out the roots. 
Because the roots are so delicate and so interwoven in 
the soil, many of the smaller ones are broken in spite of 
the greatest care. But we readily find that there are 
great numbers of roots, that they are very finely divided, 
and that they go deeply and spread widely in the earth. 
As a matter of fact, the root system of a plant often 
